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"The exchange would, indeed, seem to be in my favour, Sir Giles," he said; "but you may believe me when I say, that though I gain these large estates, I would rather have had the damsel." "Well, let the business be completed," said Sir Giles; "and that it may be so with all dispatch, do you, Lanyere, summon Lupo Vulp to us.
You shall be fully satisfied." "Then call in Lupo Vulp, and let him prepare the assignment at once," cried Sir Francis. "I shall have a rare prize; and shall effectually revenge myself on this detested Mounchensey." Of the Wager between the Conde de Gondomar and the Marquis of Buckingham.
Still, for all this irritating abuse Vulp had only himself and his ancestry to blame. The fox loved as an article of diet a plump young fledgling that had fallen from its nest, or a tasty squirrel, with flesh daintily flavoured by many a feast of nuts, or beech-mast, or eggs.
As the years wore on, Vulp gradually wandered far from his old home. The countryside, for twenty or thirty miles around, was known as intimately to him as a little garden, nestling between sunny fruit-tree walls, is known to the cottager who makes it the object of his daily care. His ears were torn by thorns and fighting; his russet coat was streaked with grey along the spine.
When summer came, and the undergrowth renewed its foliage, and the grass and the corn grew so tall and thick that Vulp could roam unseen through the fields, he left his haunts amid the woodlands at the first peep of dawn, and as long as daylight lasted lay quiet in a snug retreat amid the gorse.
Three of the cubs grew stout and strong, but the fourth was a weakling whether from injury at the hands of the huntsman or from some natural ailment was not to be determined. He died, and mysteriously disappeared, on the very day when the rest of the cubs first opened their eyes in the dim chamber among the roots of the beech. Vulp was the only male member of the happy woodland family.
Like Vulp, the fox, she knew how to hinder the chase by mingling her scent with that of other animals; so without hesitation she passed through the flock, and made straight for an open gateway in the far corner of the field.
As yet, Vulp was unacquainted with the wide, free world.
About the beginning of March, Vulp deserted the "earth" prepared by himself and the vixen for their prospective family, and took up his abode among the hazels and the hawthorns in a thick-set hedge bounding the woods. In preparing the "breeding earth," Vulp and the vixen observed the utmost care in order that its whereabouts should not be discovered.
Then I hear a sudden wail, that echoes from hillside to hillside, as the vixen calls to Vulp: "The night is white; man is asleep; I hunt alone!" And the fox, standing at the edge of the clearing, sends back his sharp, glad answer, "I come!"
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